30 avr 2014

India and the attempt to give birth to a “saffron” nation

Submitted by Anonyme (non vérifié)

Those last ten years, India changed a lot, and at the same time didn't change. This is the complicated and disturbing reality of the semi-colonial semi-feudal countries facing a “modernization”, like the great Afghan dialectical materialist Akram Yari explained it.

Because, of course, the Indian mode of production didn't change in nature; it is the social substance who has known a massive changes in its expression. The traditional casteism of the village has been transformed; it is still there, but with another form.

In this process, “India” appears: as a nation, as an unification. There is always less space for local specific cult, be it Hindu or Muslim, the trend is to unite, through the state, from above.

In this context, one side effect is the massive support for Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP - “Indian People's Party”) in the elections having begun at the beginning of April and finishing at middle May 2014.

It means that India will certainly have as prime minister and main party followers of an ultra-nationalist ideology, mainly backed by the six millions of members of the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the “National Volunteer Organization”, but having also a massive popular support. The whole Indian ruling class waits for this, pretty in an official manner as explained in the economical press.

This is indeed something very important in the history of India, because it is a “saffron” modernization of the country, with a multitude of dangers for the masses and the democratic revolution.

In fact, we are moving from the backward India of the 1960's, where the state was an administration based on brutality, corruption and amateurism, to a “modernized” India with the same social basis but with a more modern state, adapted to the demands of the new situation in India and the world.

The campaign in favor of Narendra Modi plays here a key role. During the elections and until mid-May, the BJP will have organized 5827 rallies, programmes, roadshows, etc. Modi will have even being “shown” through 3D technology projections in 1950 rallies in the whole country!

In the beginning of the 1970's, there was already such a campaign based merely on a person presented as a savior: it was with Indira Gandhi, with his slogan “Garibi Hatao”, which means “abolish poverty” in Hindi. The Congress party was then the true heart of the Indian state, it was the key for stability, in the complex situation of the submission to both the US imperialism and the Soviet social-imperialism.

Nowadays, Modi has as slogan “Congress Mukt Bharat”, which means “Congress free India”. The romanticism of the BJP pretends that all the problems come from the Congress, the main party since the independence. The problem would not be the semi-colonial and semi-feudal reality, but a not correct way to manage the state.

Here is how Modi presents this ideology:

“People of India have decided to uproot the Congress. Congress Mukt Bharat BJP ka naara nahi hai, jan jan ka sankalp hai. When I say Congress Mukt Bharat, I mean not only the Congress Party leaders but the culture the Congress has come to represent.

In various ways, through various leaders and parties, this Congress culture has spread across India. India needs freedom from this. Be it dynasty politics, nepotism, corruption, communalism, divisions in society or poverty, getting freedom from all this is what I mean by a Congress Mukt Bharat,”

It means that India faces, as main phenomenon, a Hindu nationalism conquering the masses in proposing an alternative to the present situation. It is a terribly strong saffron wave, a major counter-revolutionary threat.

Hinduism, with all is complex history, plays here a major role as ideological tool to mobilize the masses in the sense of the modernization of the semi-colonial semi-feudal reality. And it is not the first time that Hinduism transforms itself, it has a strong capacity of evolution, through the class struggles of Indian history.

This modernization shall be brutal; the ghost of the “Gujarat violence”, at a time where Modi was Chief Minister of Gujarat, plans over the elections: Hindu violence followed Muslim violence, much harder and with a certain tolerance of the local state, which also brought a lot of “modernization” of the economy there.

In fact, Modi carries officially the line of making India an “economical” and “spiritual” power (and even a “superpower” in a phantasmagorical conception); Hinduism, as a feudal ideology, is getting modernized to bring mass mobilization, in the frame of a changed (in the sense of modernized) semi-colonial semi-feudal India.

What are those changes? One very important aspect is the formation, through the “green revolution”, of a strong and “modern” feudal basis in agriculture, whose food grains production went 50.8 million tons to 263 million tons from in 1951 to 2013. The majority of the population working – 52% - is still active in the agriculture, for only 14% in the industry.

67% of the people still use basic products, like cows' dung, crop residue, firewood, to make fire for the cooking, 53% have no toilets, half of the people don't have electricity.

But on the same time, India is a nuclear power; 850 million people have a mobile phone, 43% of the households a television, and 80% of the villages profit from at least an electricity line. There also 27 million-plus cities in India.

Therefore, the state can't stay as it is, made of amateurism; it needs a new ideology and a new organization, with more grip in the population, to be able to mobilize in the senses of the reforms needed. In fact, India is turning to a fascist state which is more modern, more able to centralize and generalize a single movement.

This process was unavoidable: as the democratic revolution did not occur, it is the state which organizes the unification of the nation. And as the social substance is deeply anti-democratic, the affirmation of the nation appears through a “saffron” ideology.

With this a background, we can see that the People's War, led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), plays a significant role, as spearhead of the democratic question. But the problem is that the semi-colonial semi-feudal regime has managed to put a new impulse, coming to a new stage that needs to be understood.

We can see here the “map” of what is happening:

“Bureaucratic Capitalism. President Gonzalo states that the understanding of this issue is key to the comprehension of Peruvian society. Following Chairman Mao's thesis, he specifies five characteristics:

  1. that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism develops in the backward countries, which is comprised of the capital of large landowners, the big bankers, and the magnates of the big bourgeoisie;

  2. it exploits the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petty bourgeoisie and places constraints upon the middle bourgeoisie;

  3. it is passing through a process by which bureaucratic capitalism is combined with the power of the State and evolves into state monopoly capitalism, comprador and feudal, from which can be derived that in a first moment it unfolds as a non-state big monopoly capitalism and in a second moment, when is combined with the power of the state, it unfolds as state monopoly capitalism;

  4. it ripens the conditions for the democratic revolution as it reaches the apex of its development; and,

  5. confiscating bureaucratic capital is key to reach the pinnacle of the democratic revolution and it is decisive to pass over to the socialist revolution.

In applying the above, he conceives that bureaucratic capitalism is the capitalism that imperialism generates in the backward countries, which is linked to a decrepit feudalism and in submission to imperialism which is the last phase of capitalism.” (Communist Party of Peru : Democratic revolution).

The rise of Modi, of the state, testifies the move to a new stage; this is what must be understood by the camp of the democratic revolution.

International: